The infuriating tale of a young lady who wants and needs to be challenged put through a systemic, Leftist wood-chipper for dreams telling her she's not worth the effort...
...and, we wonder why so many doctors and other medical professionals are incompetent hacks.
It's not just doctors and medical professionals. It's every profession. I work in corporate IT and there are so, so, so many mediocre engineers, business analysts, product managers, architects, etc. It's not uncommon for employees making 300-400k to be so incompetent that they are actually SUBTRACTING value by creating processes that impede our ability to deliver or waste the time of the good engineers by asking insane questions.
I have a REALLY hard time blaming that on "the system" though. I went through the system. I work with quite a few very intelligent Gen Z engineers who are, in fact, excellent and they went through the system as well. IMO it's simply a lack a human capital. An overabundance of stupid people.
I can't relate to the student in this story at all. I was a straight A, gifted and talented, 140 IQ type person in K-12 and college. Yes, sure you're encouraged to be nice, not be gloating, not thinking you're better than someone else, etc. etc. But I never paid those lessons any mind because they were sooooo obviously blatantly false right on the surface. I looked down upon and despised anyone who wasn't as smart an me. I don't get how ANYONE can have an attitude other than, "Fuck you, dipshit. I'm gonna do whatever TF I want." especially if they've got the brains to back it up. My dark triad personality traits probably helped with that.
100%. Caring for people who are sick, broken and desperate requires a servant's heart. That's missing here; the "humanity" chip that makes a doctor a healer.
I feel differently. What you describe is compassionate empathy, but there are other kinds, such as cognitive and emotional empathy. Strong emotional empathy, not so good for a doctor. I don't want my surgeon to have a visceral reaction to cutting me open because they feel my feelings so strongly. But cognitive empathy can be a great trait for a physician, and one I would consider sufficient in selecting a doctor. I don't go to the doctor for friendship or compassion, I go for expert advice on my physical state and to have them correct issues. It's a bonus if they're personable but I'd much prefer they be good at fixing bodies than be a nice.
My brother had neuroblastoma and I spent hours and hours in hospitals from the ages of 4 to 8 (he passed when I was 8 and he was 5). I saw firsthand how my parents were affected by the way these clinicians treated them, and him. Sometimes good. Sometimes explicitly abusive.
I had a VBAC with a number of risk factors that added medical complexity.
My grandfather had his legs amputated and walked with crutches. My grandmother had diabetes and needed dialysis.
Trust me, when you are in the thick of it, *you do not want cognitive empathy.* You want a human being. It’s a nice idea on paper, sure, a dispassionate genius who loves cutting people open and gazing with love on their insides. In reality, it actually does matter that your doctor behave like a human being and not chatGPT in a flesh suit. Such people are best suited for laboratory settings and the academy.
"Before we signed off, she thanked me again and said: 'It’s so hard to find hard graders in college! I feel like I’ve regressed. Why don’t professors give this kind of feedback? Is it because they’re not paid enough?'"
I've been teaching first-year writing the last couple of years and I think I can explain. In many colleges/universities "hard grading" is not valued and, in many ways, tacitly discouraged. Outside certain very selective schools with reputations that confer status (I can't called them "elite" because that's not what they are) the competition to get students to apply and matriculate is fierce. The purpose of pedagogy and academic advising is in many ways reduced to retaining students. In a workshop I recently attended for instructors of a first-year seminar course the purpose of which is to ease students' transition to college one of the leaders said it out loud: "really, this is all about retention." Students complain about hard graders and such complaints worry administrators with eyes on the bottom line. They think students disgruntled by grades won't continue. The pressure on faculty is to dumb down to keep students satisfied. At smaller schools the loss of just a dozen students from a class can have significant financial effects.
Students who want hard grading are, in my experience and that of many colleagues, very rare creatures indeed. In a recent essay in Harper's Erik Baker, who teaches at Harvard, notes that survey "data suggests that more and more students view college education in transactional terms: an exchange of time and tuition dollars in exchange for credentials and social connections more than a site of valuable learning." He notes that a survey of Harvard's class of 2024 found that half admitted to cheating. ("What Are You Going to Do With That? The future of college in the asset economy" Harpers 9/24). Last year I overheard two student employees of the campus Starbucks who were apparently taking the same class. One said to the other "I can't be believe he [the prof.] wants us to write a summary of every paragraph in that reading. I'm not going to do that, I mean it's not evening my f**king major!" The attitude toward learning that such a comment demonstrates (it has causes too numerous to narrate here) has done many orders of magnitude more damage to higher ed than any imagined "identitarian," "left" or "woke" agenda.
The "smart kids" are generally smart enough to well in the current system and in the long-run outside school. The real scandal is the harm being done to average kids for whom higher ed could be transformative if higher standards obtained. This is a point recently well made by Scott Galloway in a controversial TED Talk. https://youtu.be/qEJ4hkpQW8E?si=KY0YK8Ne3ey63Fe5
Thank you for that background! I do wonder how you are defining "smart" though. In my essay, I was using it to refer to those students who were smart enough on paper, who had the GPA, test scores, and diligence to not only get into a competitive college or university, but who are motivated to work hard to do the work they expect they'll be asked to do. So what I mean is, I've never had a student come to me who wanted to get into an Ivy, but expected they'd be able to coast there. In fact, I'd say 90% of those who've come to me were petrified b/c on some level, they knew their HS grades were inflated, even if their test scores were respectable, and they wondered if they would be able to handle the work if they got into their dream school. So while I don't doubt there are students with the attitude you describe, they are not necessarily the "smart" ones I'm talking about, and the smart ones you are talking about -- I think -- have specific personality traits that are somewhat rare these days (K12 works so hard to drum initiative and grit OUT of kids). This girl is very bright, but her personality and cultural background (Chinese American) don't lend well to bucking the system. I didn't realize that when I worked with her four years ago -- she had 10x the gumption she has now, it's beyond depressing really. Now, the same girl who was full of fire the first time I worked with her comes across downright MEEK. What's driving that? Are the cluster-Bs demanding good grades for doing nothing contributing to the self-doubt of the kids who want to work hard? It wouldn't surprise me. That's how it works in K12, so why wouldn't it continue? Maybe she just got lucky and her K12 schools didn't have many of those kids, but her college does?
Discussing "smart" opens endless cans of worms. What I mean is a student who has well-demonstrated capacity for learning matched with a desire to learn a sense of agency to do so. The trouble is that these three characteristics are interrelated, depend on circumstance, and change over time. GPAs and test scores, in my view, often do not count as good demonstrations of capacity and potential because they are but snapshots. They have to be paired with skilled qualitative assessments to make sense and, alas, such assessments rarely happen. Once upon a time the college interview or essay might have been such an assessment. In the world marketing-driven admissions they are not.
I don't think it's at all surprising that students are de-motivated in college these days. As they mature and get a broader view of the world they are coming to the realization that their future in the world their elders (I am one) have created for them is, in many respects, bleak -- for some of the reasons Galloway touches upon -- and they feel, and in many respects are, powerless in the face of it. Adding to students' sense of hopelessness is the tendency of the elders to suggest that problem is individual shortcomings rather than structural circumstances of the world the elder's built. It's the brighter students, of course, who are capable of figuring the situation out.
I see...I still think that "brighter" has to include personality traits. I've known many students I'd consider "bright" but who come undone when they hit "the real world." I'm starting to think the worst thing about the way schools approach "SEL" is it makes too many children psychologically weaker. Even if they are bright, and would have the intellectual capacity and skill to "figure things out," they struggle b/c they've been conditioned to care about their place in the "group," and to feel guilty for "figuring things out" for themselves if it leaves others behind, and fear "losing their friends" if they excel when others don't.
I agree that we cannot start with a fixed premise of “smart” as one thing. The “system” dictates those metrics and it is outdated. Howard Gardner had a more inclusive philosophy that could reach more kids with higher education if it were embraced by schools earlier and more often. The model needs to be as adaptable as kids must be in a changing world. Otherwise education fails them.
I’ve been thinking more about the broader themes of what you write about.
For me, I think I learn so that I can do. I read so that when I see a scenario clinically, I know what to do, if not this time, then next time.
But the time to get to agency is so long now. Nobody would expect a 19 year old undergrad to open heads or do coronary bypass, but these days, a cardiac surgery starts at the age of 33, assuming that there were no gap years at any point in training.
The first independent grant for most scientists occurs after the age of 40.
Maybe some of the destruction of learning that we see is an artifact of delayed agency.
I feel like telling young people to just be themselves and write the truth they see is just as much of a potential trap as any other bad advice. I don't review college essays, but the student writing I do see is utterly devoid of what I see as the most essential information. If a student is applying to do a thing then they need to demonstrate basic familiarity with that thing and make a case for why their skills and experience make them an excellent candidate. But nobody does this. It's all sad stories about what changed their life at age 9, or even worse, a list of personal traumas they overcame. I can't remember the last time I saw an essay where a student included something that demonstrated they had done even basic Internet research on what they were applying for. I mean, it makes me wonder, when students apply to grad school these days do they even look at the strengths and weaknesses of the academic department and their advisor's published work, or do they just tell unrelated stories about feelings and empathy and various kinds of identity and empowerment?
“Natural aristocracy among men is grounded in superior demonstration of virtues and intellectual talents. This natural aristocracy is fundamentally different from the artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents”
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams 1813.
Or as my mom would say “Fine steel is tempered through a process of extreme pressure and effort”.
We are doing these students a terrible disservice when we lie to them, and many (if not most) will end up resenting us for it, even if they lack the skill to explain why they resent us. When they get out in the world, and reality does not respond to them in the same way, and fails to affirm, appease, coddle, and tolerate their half-assed efforts, they'll get angry, and they won't restrict their blame to teachers, professors, and parents...
We want to remove all pain, all strife, all struggle. But the absence of limits is not only the enemy of art, it’s the enemy of health development. You many interested in my article regarding how we no longer find it worthy to wrestle with our own limitations. We’re nearly at the point where we hate our hobbies because they’re too hard and besides, there’s an app that already does that, so why produce anything ourselves. Bad vibe to impart to our kids.
I wonder if a career counselor, even at an Ivy League school, can really help a candidate articulate why they want to be a doctor? It’s taken me 20 years of practice for me to know what drives me. I don’t think you can know until you do it.
The truth, for me, was that I wanted to make my parents proud and I wanted to be able to provide for them as they got older. This was something that I could never have said in an application.
But the truth, for me also, is that I love my work, and it is the most meaningful and important part of my life. If I had told the truth in 1994, I wouldn’t have had the life that I so love right now.
I really do understand why medical school is now like their first year students to be 25 to 27 years old. There’s no substitute for that kind of maturity. But it does tremendously delay the formation of family, life, and career.
The "truth" about why she wants to be a doctor is what it ought to be--medicine fascinates her and she's specifically interested in ophthalmology--she may not be able to say that bc it's a bit early to pick a specialty, but she certainly can explain that attending medical school to be a doctor, as opposed to working in some other capacity, interests her because she wants to be an expert to whom patients turn not just a caregiver. She wants the challenge, the level of depth, the intensity of the work medical school offers because in the end, being in a position to lead the team caring for a patient energizes and excites her. There's nothing wrong with that but she's afraid to say so for fear it sounds arrogant. To me that's sad.
Great essay, it really makes you think about how higher education has changed. Of course it is economically useful to get additional schooling but not everyone needs to go to an Ivy League school. I think it is more of a cultural class oriented achievement that allows people entry into a high society. I think David Brooks has written some good stuff about the phenomenon. Also I think that another book that would be of interest if you agree with this essay is The Coddling of the American Mind by Haidt and Lukianof. It is actually pretty entertaining to read for a sharp critique of the educational system.
School was not like this in the year 2000. Omg I’m ancient. But the truth is - everyone is so deeply traumatized by the internet and our horrendous culture and won’t name the problem (porn) that they must mollycoddle kids and tell them everything is just fine or risk actually having to address real problems.
Like your young lady, I flew high. I had humble beginnings. The voices that say, "don't talk about yourself", "don't be arrogant", "don't show your ambition" did not come from teachers. Not to me. It came from peers. It came from the culture, which is anti-intellectual and always has been. I made it through somehow.
This is so true--peers are usually the ones trying to hold smart students back. Their fear and envy drives them to do it, and adults need to watch for that and do what we can to discourage it, and protect students from it. Joining in, more insidiously, is not and should not be our response. Making jealous, character-flawed and self-destructive people into “victims” and then punishing the good by arbitrarily holding them back or withholding real support to avoid offending these pretend victims, is lazy, cowardly, and ultimately evil.
My son (tested IQ 129) was punished for his quick work at school. Instead of allowing him to deepen his knowledge of his many interests or have time to practice more music at home (he plays strings), he just got more classwork and more homework of the same things he'd already mastered to "keep it fair". It would be "unfair" to the other students for him not to have any homework (which he'd already finished in class).
I am SO sorry to hear this. I remember when I was forced to enroll my 8 year-old homeschooled eldest in public school during my divorce, the 3rd grade teacher made her teach the other students to read rather than do her own reading -- same rationale. She would come home frustrated and in tears because she wasn't "allowed" to read her books in school, and had to use her time doing a job that wasn't hers to do.
Yes! Another teacher eventually came with that 'solution' for my son as well. He helped the other children with their math. He actually liked doing that so I let it be, thinking it could also teach him some additional skills / values. But it certainly shouldn't be mandatory, especially if it's against the child's wishes as in your daughter's case. She should be doing something with her time that makes HER flourish. We were just lucky our son likes teaching.
In my experience, many teachers are very concerned that everybody in a group be the same. Bright students disrupt this, because they are different by being better academically than other students. The response from many teachers is then to try to make the bright student more like the others, which entails suppressing their academic achievement. I don't think this necessarily happens consciously, and I doubt many teachers would admit to it. But I've seen it happen a lot that a teacher subtly shuts down an intellectually superior student in order to maintain group coherence.
Your experience resonates. I’m almost afraid to ask the follow-up questions: having crafted an authentic and well-written essay with your (legitimate) assistance, was she admitted to her 1st choice medical school? To any reputable medical school? One may hope the answer is ‘yes’ to at least one of the two. One fears the answer might well be ‘no’ as the people reading the application may well be as poorly-educated and addicted to the Gleichschaltung as the medical school advisor who thought her original attempt was just dandy.
I want to add that I don't think properly written essays lead to rejection, quite the contrary. After all, she got accepted to college with an excellent essay, but once there, professors did what they too often do: they rewarded mediocrity.
One dark thought I had was that they not only DON'T reject these outliers, they seek them out, these students who think for themselves, so they can cut them down for good before they're out in the world, and it's too late.
My question is how do you go from being a high school student who can write a grammatically correct paper without help to someone who makes all kinds of errors after an IVY LEAGUE education??
This honestly reminded me of a few friends I know in med school and law school. Super smart people who used to have strong opinions and unique voices, and now they just sound like they’re writing for approval. It’s like their real thoughts went into hiding.
The part about her whispering her ambition really got me. Since when did it become embarrassing to want to be great at something? Why are we telling kids to tone it down instead of go all in?
I don’t think the system rewards honesty anymore. It rewards the safest version of yourself. And that’s a problem, especially in fields like medicine where we need real leaders, not just polished applicants.
The infuriating tale of a young lady who wants and needs to be challenged put through a systemic, Leftist wood-chipper for dreams telling her she's not worth the effort...
...and, we wonder why so many doctors and other medical professionals are incompetent hacks.
It's not just doctors and medical professionals. It's every profession. I work in corporate IT and there are so, so, so many mediocre engineers, business analysts, product managers, architects, etc. It's not uncommon for employees making 300-400k to be so incompetent that they are actually SUBTRACTING value by creating processes that impede our ability to deliver or waste the time of the good engineers by asking insane questions.
I have a REALLY hard time blaming that on "the system" though. I went through the system. I work with quite a few very intelligent Gen Z engineers who are, in fact, excellent and they went through the system as well. IMO it's simply a lack a human capital. An overabundance of stupid people.
I can't relate to the student in this story at all. I was a straight A, gifted and talented, 140 IQ type person in K-12 and college. Yes, sure you're encouraged to be nice, not be gloating, not thinking you're better than someone else, etc. etc. But I never paid those lessons any mind because they were sooooo obviously blatantly false right on the surface. I looked down upon and despised anyone who wasn't as smart an me. I don't get how ANYONE can have an attitude other than, "Fuck you, dipshit. I'm gonna do whatever TF I want." especially if they've got the brains to back it up. My dark triad personality traits probably helped with that.
Well you're an outlier amongst outliers. Congratulations.
"An overabundance of stupid people" who got inflated grades and unwarranted rewards.
"An overabundance of stupid people."
Humanity's problem from day one.
"My dark triad personality traits probably helped with that."
Which is how we have inadvertently created a system that rewards dark triad personality traits.
Something about the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Medical school now selects for incompetent hacks. And I spend my time coaching people on how to manage them.
No offense to this young lady but I wouldn't want her to be my doctor.
I don't trust doctors in general anymore (for good reason) but something's missing from her personality a little bit.
And the regression in grammar is really a kicker. How does one get worse at riding a bicycle?
100%. Caring for people who are sick, broken and desperate requires a servant's heart. That's missing here; the "humanity" chip that makes a doctor a healer.
I feel differently. What you describe is compassionate empathy, but there are other kinds, such as cognitive and emotional empathy. Strong emotional empathy, not so good for a doctor. I don't want my surgeon to have a visceral reaction to cutting me open because they feel my feelings so strongly. But cognitive empathy can be a great trait for a physician, and one I would consider sufficient in selecting a doctor. I don't go to the doctor for friendship or compassion, I go for expert advice on my physical state and to have them correct issues. It's a bonus if they're personable but I'd much prefer they be good at fixing bodies than be a nice.
Perhaps the difference is in personal experience.
My brother had neuroblastoma and I spent hours and hours in hospitals from the ages of 4 to 8 (he passed when I was 8 and he was 5). I saw firsthand how my parents were affected by the way these clinicians treated them, and him. Sometimes good. Sometimes explicitly abusive.
I had a VBAC with a number of risk factors that added medical complexity.
My grandfather had his legs amputated and walked with crutches. My grandmother had diabetes and needed dialysis.
Trust me, when you are in the thick of it, *you do not want cognitive empathy.* You want a human being. It’s a nice idea on paper, sure, a dispassionate genius who loves cutting people open and gazing with love on their insides. In reality, it actually does matter that your doctor behave like a human being and not chatGPT in a flesh suit. Such people are best suited for laboratory settings and the academy.
"Before we signed off, she thanked me again and said: 'It’s so hard to find hard graders in college! I feel like I’ve regressed. Why don’t professors give this kind of feedback? Is it because they’re not paid enough?'"
I've been teaching first-year writing the last couple of years and I think I can explain. In many colleges/universities "hard grading" is not valued and, in many ways, tacitly discouraged. Outside certain very selective schools with reputations that confer status (I can't called them "elite" because that's not what they are) the competition to get students to apply and matriculate is fierce. The purpose of pedagogy and academic advising is in many ways reduced to retaining students. In a workshop I recently attended for instructors of a first-year seminar course the purpose of which is to ease students' transition to college one of the leaders said it out loud: "really, this is all about retention." Students complain about hard graders and such complaints worry administrators with eyes on the bottom line. They think students disgruntled by grades won't continue. The pressure on faculty is to dumb down to keep students satisfied. At smaller schools the loss of just a dozen students from a class can have significant financial effects.
Students who want hard grading are, in my experience and that of many colleagues, very rare creatures indeed. In a recent essay in Harper's Erik Baker, who teaches at Harvard, notes that survey "data suggests that more and more students view college education in transactional terms: an exchange of time and tuition dollars in exchange for credentials and social connections more than a site of valuable learning." He notes that a survey of Harvard's class of 2024 found that half admitted to cheating. ("What Are You Going to Do With That? The future of college in the asset economy" Harpers 9/24). Last year I overheard two student employees of the campus Starbucks who were apparently taking the same class. One said to the other "I can't be believe he [the prof.] wants us to write a summary of every paragraph in that reading. I'm not going to do that, I mean it's not evening my f**king major!" The attitude toward learning that such a comment demonstrates (it has causes too numerous to narrate here) has done many orders of magnitude more damage to higher ed than any imagined "identitarian," "left" or "woke" agenda.
The "smart kids" are generally smart enough to well in the current system and in the long-run outside school. The real scandal is the harm being done to average kids for whom higher ed could be transformative if higher standards obtained. This is a point recently well made by Scott Galloway in a controversial TED Talk. https://youtu.be/qEJ4hkpQW8E?si=KY0YK8Ne3ey63Fe5
Thank you for that background! I do wonder how you are defining "smart" though. In my essay, I was using it to refer to those students who were smart enough on paper, who had the GPA, test scores, and diligence to not only get into a competitive college or university, but who are motivated to work hard to do the work they expect they'll be asked to do. So what I mean is, I've never had a student come to me who wanted to get into an Ivy, but expected they'd be able to coast there. In fact, I'd say 90% of those who've come to me were petrified b/c on some level, they knew their HS grades were inflated, even if their test scores were respectable, and they wondered if they would be able to handle the work if they got into their dream school. So while I don't doubt there are students with the attitude you describe, they are not necessarily the "smart" ones I'm talking about, and the smart ones you are talking about -- I think -- have specific personality traits that are somewhat rare these days (K12 works so hard to drum initiative and grit OUT of kids). This girl is very bright, but her personality and cultural background (Chinese American) don't lend well to bucking the system. I didn't realize that when I worked with her four years ago -- she had 10x the gumption she has now, it's beyond depressing really. Now, the same girl who was full of fire the first time I worked with her comes across downright MEEK. What's driving that? Are the cluster-Bs demanding good grades for doing nothing contributing to the self-doubt of the kids who want to work hard? It wouldn't surprise me. That's how it works in K12, so why wouldn't it continue? Maybe she just got lucky and her K12 schools didn't have many of those kids, but her college does?
Discussing "smart" opens endless cans of worms. What I mean is a student who has well-demonstrated capacity for learning matched with a desire to learn a sense of agency to do so. The trouble is that these three characteristics are interrelated, depend on circumstance, and change over time. GPAs and test scores, in my view, often do not count as good demonstrations of capacity and potential because they are but snapshots. They have to be paired with skilled qualitative assessments to make sense and, alas, such assessments rarely happen. Once upon a time the college interview or essay might have been such an assessment. In the world marketing-driven admissions they are not.
I don't think it's at all surprising that students are de-motivated in college these days. As they mature and get a broader view of the world they are coming to the realization that their future in the world their elders (I am one) have created for them is, in many respects, bleak -- for some of the reasons Galloway touches upon -- and they feel, and in many respects are, powerless in the face of it. Adding to students' sense of hopelessness is the tendency of the elders to suggest that problem is individual shortcomings rather than structural circumstances of the world the elder's built. It's the brighter students, of course, who are capable of figuring the situation out.
One example of the structural circumstances: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/04/job-market-youth/682641/
I see...I still think that "brighter" has to include personality traits. I've known many students I'd consider "bright" but who come undone when they hit "the real world." I'm starting to think the worst thing about the way schools approach "SEL" is it makes too many children psychologically weaker. Even if they are bright, and would have the intellectual capacity and skill to "figure things out," they struggle b/c they've been conditioned to care about their place in the "group," and to feel guilty for "figuring things out" for themselves if it leaves others behind, and fear "losing their friends" if they excel when others don't.
I agree that we cannot start with a fixed premise of “smart” as one thing. The “system” dictates those metrics and it is outdated. Howard Gardner had a more inclusive philosophy that could reach more kids with higher education if it were embraced by schools earlier and more often. The model needs to be as adaptable as kids must be in a changing world. Otherwise education fails them.
What might that look like?
Thanks for the Galloway link! On fire, that guy!
I’ve been thinking more about the broader themes of what you write about.
For me, I think I learn so that I can do. I read so that when I see a scenario clinically, I know what to do, if not this time, then next time.
But the time to get to agency is so long now. Nobody would expect a 19 year old undergrad to open heads or do coronary bypass, but these days, a cardiac surgery starts at the age of 33, assuming that there were no gap years at any point in training.
The first independent grant for most scientists occurs after the age of 40.
Maybe some of the destruction of learning that we see is an artifact of delayed agency.
Or it could be policies like this: https://freebeacon.com/campus/racial-discrimination-persists-at-ucla-medical-school-as-federal-investigation-is-underway-documents-show/
Or both. :)
I feel like telling young people to just be themselves and write the truth they see is just as much of a potential trap as any other bad advice. I don't review college essays, but the student writing I do see is utterly devoid of what I see as the most essential information. If a student is applying to do a thing then they need to demonstrate basic familiarity with that thing and make a case for why their skills and experience make them an excellent candidate. But nobody does this. It's all sad stories about what changed their life at age 9, or even worse, a list of personal traumas they overcame. I can't remember the last time I saw an essay where a student included something that demonstrated they had done even basic Internet research on what they were applying for. I mean, it makes me wonder, when students apply to grad school these days do they even look at the strengths and weaknesses of the academic department and their advisor's published work, or do they just tell unrelated stories about feelings and empathy and various kinds of identity and empowerment?
“Natural aristocracy among men is grounded in superior demonstration of virtues and intellectual talents. This natural aristocracy is fundamentally different from the artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents”
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams 1813.
Or as my mom would say “Fine steel is tempered through a process of extreme pressure and effort”.
100%
We are doing these students a terrible disservice when we lie to them, and many (if not most) will end up resenting us for it, even if they lack the skill to explain why they resent us. When they get out in the world, and reality does not respond to them in the same way, and fails to affirm, appease, coddle, and tolerate their half-assed efforts, they'll get angry, and they won't restrict their blame to teachers, professors, and parents...
We want to remove all pain, all strife, all struggle. But the absence of limits is not only the enemy of art, it’s the enemy of health development. You many interested in my article regarding how we no longer find it worthy to wrestle with our own limitations. We’re nearly at the point where we hate our hobbies because they’re too hard and besides, there’s an app that already does that, so why produce anything ourselves. Bad vibe to impart to our kids.
https://culturalcourage.substack.com/p/the-absence-of-limits
I wonder if a career counselor, even at an Ivy League school, can really help a candidate articulate why they want to be a doctor? It’s taken me 20 years of practice for me to know what drives me. I don’t think you can know until you do it.
True, but you probably had a reason you wanted to go to medical school specifically, and it was more than “I want to help people.”
The truth, for me, was that I wanted to make my parents proud and I wanted to be able to provide for them as they got older. This was something that I could never have said in an application.
But the truth, for me also, is that I love my work, and it is the most meaningful and important part of my life. If I had told the truth in 1994, I wouldn’t have had the life that I so love right now.
I really do understand why medical school is now like their first year students to be 25 to 27 years old. There’s no substitute for that kind of maturity. But it does tremendously delay the formation of family, life, and career.
The "truth" about why she wants to be a doctor is what it ought to be--medicine fascinates her and she's specifically interested in ophthalmology--she may not be able to say that bc it's a bit early to pick a specialty, but she certainly can explain that attending medical school to be a doctor, as opposed to working in some other capacity, interests her because she wants to be an expert to whom patients turn not just a caregiver. She wants the challenge, the level of depth, the intensity of the work medical school offers because in the end, being in a position to lead the team caring for a patient energizes and excites her. There's nothing wrong with that but she's afraid to say so for fear it sounds arrogant. To me that's sad.
It sounds like she’s a terrific young woman, And any medical school would be proud to have her as a graduate. Lots of luck.
And good on you, for helping her find her voice. That guidance is invaluable.
Great essay, it really makes you think about how higher education has changed. Of course it is economically useful to get additional schooling but not everyone needs to go to an Ivy League school. I think it is more of a cultural class oriented achievement that allows people entry into a high society. I think David Brooks has written some good stuff about the phenomenon. Also I think that another book that would be of interest if you agree with this essay is The Coddling of the American Mind by Haidt and Lukianof. It is actually pretty entertaining to read for a sharp critique of the educational system.
Sending them to obedience training
They wanted workers not thinkers, honestly don’t know what they want now… weakness for one thing.
Thought you may find this interesting… get them before 7!
https://substack.com/@lastcall1/note/c-114293413?r=21ti8h&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
School was not like this in the year 2000. Omg I’m ancient. But the truth is - everyone is so deeply traumatized by the internet and our horrendous culture and won’t name the problem (porn) that they must mollycoddle kids and tell them everything is just fine or risk actually having to address real problems.
Answer: we are throwing them under the bus full of underperforming kids.
Like your young lady, I flew high. I had humble beginnings. The voices that say, "don't talk about yourself", "don't be arrogant", "don't show your ambition" did not come from teachers. Not to me. It came from peers. It came from the culture, which is anti-intellectual and always has been. I made it through somehow.
This is so true--peers are usually the ones trying to hold smart students back. Their fear and envy drives them to do it, and adults need to watch for that and do what we can to discourage it, and protect students from it. Joining in, more insidiously, is not and should not be our response. Making jealous, character-flawed and self-destructive people into “victims” and then punishing the good by arbitrarily holding them back or withholding real support to avoid offending these pretend victims, is lazy, cowardly, and ultimately evil.
My son (tested IQ 129) was punished for his quick work at school. Instead of allowing him to deepen his knowledge of his many interests or have time to practice more music at home (he plays strings), he just got more classwork and more homework of the same things he'd already mastered to "keep it fair". It would be "unfair" to the other students for him not to have any homework (which he'd already finished in class).
I am SO sorry to hear this. I remember when I was forced to enroll my 8 year-old homeschooled eldest in public school during my divorce, the 3rd grade teacher made her teach the other students to read rather than do her own reading -- same rationale. She would come home frustrated and in tears because she wasn't "allowed" to read her books in school, and had to use her time doing a job that wasn't hers to do.
Yes! Another teacher eventually came with that 'solution' for my son as well. He helped the other children with their math. He actually liked doing that so I let it be, thinking it could also teach him some additional skills / values. But it certainly shouldn't be mandatory, especially if it's against the child's wishes as in your daughter's case. She should be doing something with her time that makes HER flourish. We were just lucky our son likes teaching.
This is because teachers have been brainwashed into thinking doing that to a student means “ differentiating”
In my experience, many teachers are very concerned that everybody in a group be the same. Bright students disrupt this, because they are different by being better academically than other students. The response from many teachers is then to try to make the bright student more like the others, which entails suppressing their academic achievement. I don't think this necessarily happens consciously, and I doubt many teachers would admit to it. But I've seen it happen a lot that a teacher subtly shuts down an intellectually superior student in order to maintain group coherence.
Your experience resonates. I’m almost afraid to ask the follow-up questions: having crafted an authentic and well-written essay with your (legitimate) assistance, was she admitted to her 1st choice medical school? To any reputable medical school? One may hope the answer is ‘yes’ to at least one of the two. One fears the answer might well be ‘no’ as the people reading the application may well be as poorly-educated and addicted to the Gleichschaltung as the medical school advisor who thought her original attempt was just dandy.
I want to add that I don't think properly written essays lead to rejection, quite the contrary. After all, she got accepted to college with an excellent essay, but once there, professors did what they too often do: they rewarded mediocrity.
One dark thought I had was that they not only DON'T reject these outliers, they seek them out, these students who think for themselves, so they can cut them down for good before they're out in the world, and it's too late.
My question is how do you go from being a high school student who can write a grammatically correct paper without help to someone who makes all kinds of errors after an IVY LEAGUE education??
This isn’t a rhetorical question btw; I’m genuinely curious.
Cutting the tall poppies.
We are still in the process of working on that. She will apply to 30 or so, but she’s busy working on a NEW first draft right now.
This honestly reminded me of a few friends I know in med school and law school. Super smart people who used to have strong opinions and unique voices, and now they just sound like they’re writing for approval. It’s like their real thoughts went into hiding.
The part about her whispering her ambition really got me. Since when did it become embarrassing to want to be great at something? Why are we telling kids to tone it down instead of go all in?
I don’t think the system rewards honesty anymore. It rewards the safest version of yourself. And that’s a problem, especially in fields like medicine where we need real leaders, not just polished applicants.